If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Love Brought Us Here
or
Unbow Your Head, Sister

I wasn't that big a fan of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins' previous film whose Best Picture win caused a stir and put him on the A-list of directors. The acting was impeccable from a cast that made you care about people that were damaged or damaging, and one got the sense of hopelessness and of an endless cycle that only reinforced it, despite the gorgeous tones the cinematography of James Laxton painted it with.

One should be grateful for it, though, when the product of the man's work is something like If Beale Street Could Talk, his adaptation (written and directed) of James Baldwin's 1974 novel of love in New York, amidst a backdrop of prejudice, of love that even hate can't stop.

Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) are young and in love. She's 19. He's 22. They've been friends since they were kids. Then, they grew up and became more than friendship. 

Their families have known each other a long time, but probably wouldn't if it weren't for the kids. Tish's folks are warm and and inclusive. Fonny's out on his own because of his, but mostly his mother, who is struggling with the burden of raising her family according to the teachings of Christ, but with a less charitable reading of it.

So, when Tish winds up pregnant ("I shoulda said we weren't married" she says in the narration), there's two reactions: Tish's family is warily happy, but accepting. Fonny's father is fine with it, but his mother is livid: "I just pray and I pray and I pray that my boy will come to The Light." But turns on Tish: "I always knew you would be the destruction of my son" and lashes out against "the bastard" Tish is carrying. "You just cursed your own grand-child," Tish's mother Sharon (Regina King) upbraids her and tosses her out.

That is that. Tish and Fonny plan to get married and set their sights on a loft, which is surprising—they find a white guy (Dave Franco) who will rent to them. But then, Fonny gets arrested, charged with the rape of a Puerto Rican woman, who lives across town and out of Fonny's sphere. Seems that Fonny has been set up by a white cop who wanted to bring Fonny in for assaulting a creep (white) who'd been harassing Tish. The arrest is just pay-back for the other incident, and even Fonny's alibi (the ubiquitous Bryan Tyree Henry—he now brings a smile to my face whenever he's on-screen) gets arrested by the D.A.'s office for stealing a car (despite the fact he doesn't know how to drive). The fix is in.

It's the environment of New York at the time. "the black kids were told they weren't worth shit. And everything around them proved it," says Tish at one point in her narration—which has a dream-like reverberation running through it. As she and her family struggle to get a good lawyer (a young eager white dude who insists on being formal and calling Fonny by his given name "Alonzo" to which Tish replies "Call him Fonny. If you're going to defend him, you gotta be family"), Tish takes a job as a token employee at a perfume counter in a department store, the two fathers do whatever they can to raise money, even if it's not exactly legal ("These are our children—we have to set them free."), and Tish's mother takes a trip to Puerto Rico to try to talk to the woman who picked Fonny out of a line-up. They pull together, even as the world threatens to pull the kids apart. 

Jenkins' method of telling their simple story is chronologically complex, going back and forth in time to set up the stakes and challenges at their most emotionally effective moments. And, as with Moonlight, the world of New York has never looked more beautiful, even in the low-light of a basement flat—one may quibble that the Bronx in 1971 was not as portrayed, but it just might be that way through eyes that see with love and will do anything to preserve it.

Tish visits Fonny in prison and tries to encourage him, although it's tough-going—"I hope nobody has ever had to look at someone they love through glass." Their visitations are tough to watch, as Tish and Fonny have barely been out of touch or even in separate frames. They are linked in Jenkins' camera-view, and even when they're not looking at each other, they still hold hands.

It's very much a "you and me against the world" scenario, as most young love tends to be. But, Tish and Fonny are old souls looking to each other to keep hope alive in a threatening environment, looking for saints in the city when they are surrounded by devils. To see light when all around them is darkness and despair.

Maybe Fonny's mother doesn't have it quite so wrong, after all...